“Why shouldn’t I be serious?”

“Because one can’t arrest a man without a reason.”

“Without a reason?  A scoundrel like this?  A murderer?  What more do you want?”

“In the absence of compulsion, of catching him in the act, I want something that I haven’t got.”

“What’s that?”

“A warrant.  I haven’t a warrant.”

Mazeroux’s accent was so full of conviction, and the answer struck Don Luis Perenna as so comical, that he burst out laughing.

“You have no warrant?  Poor little chap!  Well, I’ll soon show you if I need a warrant!”

“You’ll show me nothing,” cried Mazeroux, hanging on to his companion’s arm.  “You shan’t touch the man.”

“One would think he was your mother!”

“Come, Chief.”

“But, you stick-in-the-mud of an honest man,” shouted Don Luis, angrily, “if we let this opportunity slip shall we ever find another?”

“Easily.  He’s going home.  I’ll inform the commissary of police.  He will telephone to headquarters; and to-morrow morning—­”

“And suppose the bird has flown?”

“I have no warrant.”

“Do you want me to sign you one, idiot?”

But Don Luis mastered his rage.  He felt that all his arguments would be shattered to pieces against the sergeant’s obstinacy, and that, if necessary, Mazeroux would go to the length of defending the enemy against him.  He simply said in a sententious tone: 

“One ass and you make a pair of asses; and there are as many asses as there are people who try to do police work with bits of paper, signatures, warrants, and other gammon.  Police work, my lad, is done with one’s fists.  When you come upon the enemy, hit him.  Otherwise, you stand a chance of hitting the air.  With that, good-night.  I’m going to bed.  Telephone to me when the job is done.”

He went home, furious, sick of an adventure in which he had not had elbow room, and in which he had had to submit to the will, or, rather, to the weakness of others.

But next morning when he woke up his longing to see the police lay hold of the man with the ebony stick, and especially the feeling that his assistance would be of use, impelled him to dress as quickly as he could.

“If I don’t come to the rescue,” he thought, “they’ll let themselves be done in the eye.  They’re not equal to a contest of this kind.”

Just then Mazeroux rang up and asked to speak to him.  He rushed to a little telephone box which his predecessor had fitted up on the first floor, in a dark recess that communicated only with his study, and switched on the electric light.

“Is that you, Alexandre?”

“Yes, Chief.  I’m speaking from a wine shop near the house on the Boulevard Richard-Wallace.”

“What about our man?”

“The bird’s still in the nest.  But we’re only just in time.”

“Really?”

“Yes, he’s packed his trunk.  He’s going away this morning.”